last Friday discussion wrap

A few quick points left over from our discussion of music file sharing and Hawthorne Heights from the last Friday we had class...

I about went out of my gourd at Hannah's anecdote about her downloading habits. (Since Sony's new digital technology prevents CDs from being ripped onto a computer, she buys CD's but then has to download the tracks so she can listen to them on her computer, since there isn't a stereo in her room). She should take that one to the folks at Sony. Idiots. Already there have been a couple of lawsuits against the company, and there will be more to come with that digital reproduction tech.

I need to check out Myspace (maybe after the semester ends and I'm not buried under an avalanche of crap). While the concepts of how Hawthorne Heights (the band) spread their music via the web, and I think it's a great idea. What I don't get -- and this is a microcosm of my attitude toward the blogging world in general -- is who has the time to sit and listen to random music on the internet.

Maybe it's my busy schedule and the fact I was brought up on dial-up internet. I need a break.

The blog vs. totalitarianism

Interesting NYT article about a young woman who is using the internet to surreptitiously defy the authorities in China (pictures are slightly on the risky side, but it's very relevant to what we've been talking about in class).

The story didn't go into great detail about what her posts actually say, it focused more on examples of the live video-type stuff she shows (it's suggestive, but not pornographic). Of more interest to me was the examples of other blogs kept by Chinese. If you didn't know, the Chinese government works ridiculously hard (actively trying to block anything that smacks of democracy) to censor what the Chinese people see and do on the internet. To show up in suggestive poses, like our friend Mu Mu does, is to push the envelope even further.
She'd better hope the government can't find a way to trace her, because no one would probably ever see her pictures -- or see her in real life -- again if they did.

Another point of interest in the article: discussion of the mascots for the 2008 Olympics. The mascots that were developed were praised by the press, but roundly criticized by blogs, which the article says are the best indicator of true public opinion.

Does this government care at all about the welfare of its people? Rhetorical question. It's a disgrace.

The Great NYT Whale

What would I do if I were the New York Times and an entire news and information ecosystem depended on me?

Hmmmm...

The reason this question is asked is because newspapers as we know them are definitely dying out. A big reason for that, cited in digcomm class is that newspapers have lost a lot of credibility with the general public. That's the reason blogs are becoming so popular, however, blogs are still largely dependent on the reporting of big news organizations like the NYT. So we can't really resign ourselves to a total purge of all newspapers and just focus on blogs to get our news.

Well, I still can't come up with an answer after a day and a half of semi-serious thought. I agree that we can't do away with newspapers. Part of that is my old-fashioned side that still screams newspapers are still trustworthy (I'm sure I get a lot of that from the fact that I too am a journalist and consider myself a largely trustworthy one at that). I honestly don't see newspapers making many more changes from where we are now. I think the New York Times Select edition will become more of the norm in American newspapers everywhere, as more and more people get fast internet access and prefer the speed and convenience of online (I think the same people who used to pay for printed subscriptions will eventually get around to subscribing to well-developed online ones). TimesSelect is basically a news filter, allowing readers to quickly navigate through stories that they're the most interested in (TimesSelect involves more than that, but that's the stripped-down explanation). Eventually everyone will get around to getting wired and using stuff like this.

As far as newspapers and their credibility, I think credibility is evolving. In much the same way that the American people lost a lot of faith in their elected officials after the Watergate fiasco in the 1970s, newspapers will run a similar course and eventually people will start to trust them again or stop reading the news altogether. In our crazy world, none of us has the time to gather the news for ourselves. Unless we develop a governmental news-gathering association (a la the BBC, which is well-run and could serve as a potential model should we ultimately pursue that route), we're just going to have to go on reading what major news organizations publish for us.

One other government-related idea: Pass legislation that more strictly regulates and privatizes news outlets, in a similar fashion to the Communications Act of 1996 but for print and with tougher standards. It ain't happening, as long as soft money and political lobbying groups still exist in America, but it would be worth looking at.

Diffusion of Innovation wrap

I didn't have a lot to say in the class discussion on diffusion of innovation theory, mostly because it's hard for me to get my mind around the communication methods of corn farmers in Iowa, but here are a couple quick thoughts that are much overdue.
I wonder how the people who study stuff like this justify their existence. Obviously, the Iowa corn farmers and the doctors in Illinois ( I think that was where the example study took place) don't listen to anyone who isn't in their circle when they're making decisions about what they do. In the doctors' case, it was a new drug, in the farmers' case, it was a new kind of hybrid seed corn. The way both spread was through word-of-mouth among farmers and doctors, respectively, and not because some suit from a university said it was better. So why study diffusion of innovation theory? Even if we understand better ways to get information out to people, is it going to do any good if they don't listen?

digital comm project

Random observation about our digital communication class project (a multimedia web design thing, there will be more buzz in this space about it when we actually complete the thing). It will be interesting to see how the concepts we've talked about in class, like word of mouse/ant theory, will be put into practice once we actually get it on the web. How is the word about it going to get out? I'm sure all of us will put something about it on our blogs, and tell our friends, but I still don't see how anyone outside of our families and classmates will find this presentation (which should turn out to be freakin' sweet). Then again, could we end up like Mahir the Turk (I tried to link to his mucho estupido web site, but it wouldn't load. Maybe he finally gave up on trying to have sex with as many women as possible.) and become cult sensations.
Who knows? We'll know in a couple of months. I hope we have a way of tracking the hits on that site.

Update on file-sharer Grokster

I had thought that Grokster, the file-sharing giant that lost a key Supreme Court case last summer, was done. According to this article in the NYT, Grokster has now agreed to a settlement to completely discontinue distribution of its file sharing software.
I kinda have to agree with the entertainment companies on the whole music file sharing thing. While I'm definitely in favor of First Amendment freedoms, I don't necessarily agree that we should all be able to exchange music. I know the record companies and musicians make a ton of money off the public anyway, but it's still a copyright violation to give it away for free. I don't equate music with "information" ( I feel the same way about movies).

Yahoo v. Google...cage match, anyone?

Great column on the NYT website from Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows.

This was a very interesting look at Yahoo and its burgeoning subsidiaries. What struck me was that Yahoo is never really mentioned as a heavyweight in the digital world, it's all Microsoft and Googlegooglegoogle. Do you ever hear people say they're going to Yahoo something (as in, "I'm going to google my name just to see what comes up")? I actually use Yahoo much more than I do Google. My startup page is the very useful My Yahoo portal, and I generally use their search engine as opposed to anyone else's. I love what Yahoo is doing, improving email, quietly outdistancing Microsoft's Hotmail as the world's leading free web-based email and generally doing all kinds of things to keep pace with the Googles of the world. And they've done it all by being all-inclusive and keeping every imaginable service on the web in one place. As Fallows says, "while I know that eBay is at heart an auction site and Amazon.com a retailer, I have not been sure what Yahoo "is" - apart, of course, from a company with a $53 billion market value and weekly revenue of more than $90 million, whose sites make up the largest single presence on the Internet and, according to company officials, account for 13 percent of all page views." Great way to put it. Yahoo is one giant web-based tool, and it's quietly going to fight with Google to take over our internet lives.
Which I'm fine with, at least for the time being.

Wired discussion from Friday

Quick wrap on the almost self-explanatory discussion on the two articles from Wired that we had on Friday:
The story on Howard Dean and his campaign, which transcended digital boundaries, was ant theory, pure and simple. A little-known governor suddenly became a major-party presidential candidate because of the power of word of mouse. I'm surprised that no other politician (that I've heard of) hasn't tried to copy the decentralized model of Dean's campaign. True, as Dr. Carroll pointed out, the Bush campaign was run in a more traditional, bureaucratic fashion, and the asshole ended up winning (excuse my French). Also, as Josh pointed out, there is a relatively small cross-section of voters that are internet-enabled and thus would be able to further the campaign. Still, the fact that the web was so successful for Dean -- up to the fateful "Dean Scream" night at the Iowa primary, which didn't have anything to do with his campaign strategy -- and that he and his campaign people basically stumbled onto it as a means of getting their message across, makes me wonder why someone else hasn't at least given it a shot. What have they got to lose?
The second article: Explained the concepts behind Moveon.org. Great idea. It's been wildly successful; with 2 million people joining. There are a very few people who actually initiated it, which is a good example of the net's power to connect people. It's not affiliated with any candidate, which could be a big reason why it's so popular. I almost expect conservatives to counterattack with www.staythesame.org. (that's not a real link so don't click on it).
Ba-dum-ching!

identity protection

Here's a link to an NYT story about identity theft prevention in the digital age (sometimes the NYT links don't work because they don't allow to read archived stories for free).
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/technology/circuits/03basics.html?pagewanted=2&th&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1131033775-PilFkarR5qLT82kAM3mFeA

While I've never really given much thought to the process of stealing someone's identity/information that is stored digitally, I found this interesting. It's true that data destruction often gets overlooked and that you often think throwing something in the computer's trash can means it's gone forever. The article is about different security measures that can be taken to totally erase information from a hard drive. (What kind of information that has to do with someone's core identity, like their social security number, is even on a hard drive?). It's unfortunate that we need to take more and more precautions to protect ourselves digitally from thieves.

Wiki mania

Considering I'd never heard of a wikipedia before starting digital communication class, I've sure become interested, although I still fully don't understand. This article says that the popular online wikipedia could soon become a printed encyclopedia, competing with the 20-year-old set of world books my parents own.
Wikipedias, on their face, are a great idea. The thought of anyone being able to contribute to an encyclopedia is exciting (and also calls into question who writes those old-school encyclopedia entries anyway). At the same time, I'm still leery of the ability of an encyclopedia edited by schmoes like myself who have internet access and too much spare time to give us information we might rely on. There are far too many whack-jobs on the internet for me to trust some random stranger to tell me the truth and give it to me without spin.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.